William Keegan

William James Gregory Keegan, CBE (born 3 July 1938) is a British journalist and a fiction and non-fiction author. He was Economics Editor of The Observer from 1977 to 2003, and continues to contribute to the paper as a columnist.

Education and early life[]

Keegan was educated at Wimbledon College and Trinity College, Cambridge. He completed his national service in the Royal Tank Regiment from 1957 to 1959.^[1]

Career[]

Keegan became a journalist at the Financial Times in 1963; he moved to the Daily Mail in 1964, then returned for a nine-year spell at the Financial Times in 1967. He then worked in the Bank of England Economics Intelligence Department, and as assistant to the Bank's Governor, from 1976 to 1977.^[1][2]

From 1977 to 2003 he was Economics Editor of The Observer; after reaching the age of 65 he continued there as a Senior Economics Commentator.^[1]

He has sat on a number of committees and advisory boards, beginning in 1981 on the BBC Advisory Committee on Business and Industrial Affairs.^[1] Keegan has authored two fiction books, in 1974 and 1976, and eight books on economics and politics, between 1978 and 2012.^[1]

In 1989 he became a visiting professor of journalism at the University of Sheffield, and in 2012 a visiting professor of economics at Queen Mary University of London.^[1] He is also a visiting professor at The Policy Institute, King's College London,^[3] and is involved in The Strand Group seminar series there.^[4]

In 2009 Keegan received a CBE for services to journalism.^[5]

As of 2019, William Keegan is a columnist for The Guardian.^[6]

Personal life[]

Keegan is married to a barrister. They live in Islington, London. He has seven children, including four from a previous marriage.^[5]

His brother Victor Keegan was a journalist at The Guardian, and a member of the Scott Trust which owns the Guardian Media Group.^[5]

Works[]

Fiction

• Consulting Father Wintergreen (Unknown, 1974).
• A Real Killing (St Martins Pr, 1977).

Non-Fiction

• (with Rupert Pennant-Rea), Who Runs the Economy? Control and Influence in British Economic Policy (London: Temple Smith, 1979).
• Mrs. Thatcher's Economic Experiment (London: Allen Lane, 1984; 2nd ed. 1985).
• Britain Without Oil (London: Harmondsworth, 1985).
• Mr. Lawson's Gamble (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1989).
• The Spectre of Capitalism (Radius, 1992).
• 2066 and All That: Britain and Europe Sort it Out (Iynx Publishing, 2000).
• The Prudence of Mr. Gordon Brown (John Wiley & Sons, 2003).
• Saving the World? - Gordon Brown Reconsidered (Searching Finance Ltd, 2012).
• Mr Osborne's Economic Experiment (Searching Finance Ltd, 2014).
• (with David Marsh and Richard Roberts), Six Days in September: Black Wednesday, Brexit and the making of Europe (OMFIF Press, 2017).

References[]